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The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a touching little film that appeals to the dreamer in all of us. I’m sure everyone can recall at least one occasion where they’ve escaped into fantasy to avoid boredom at the office, or to imagine a far better version of an encounter with a potential partner.

While the film does a good job of slotting Walter’s fantasies into the story, his real world adventures feel a bit too easy. It’s nice to imagine that we could pick up and leave our lives to go skateboarding across Greenland or hiking in Afghanistan, but there doesn’t really seem to be any real consequences that Walter has to deal with. The ending also feels a little too easy, but this is Hollywood after all.

Visually, the film is a treat; perfectly capturing the beauty of the various lands that Walter has to journey through. This adds a great deal to the film, and allows us to feel as if we are on the journey along with him. The supporting cast puts in some great performances in the little time they have, but Ben Stiller really carries this film, and carries it well.

‘An entry-level employee at a powerful corporation finds himself occupying a corner office, but at a dangerous price: he must spy on his boss’s old mentor to secure for him a multi-billion dollar advantage.‘

Paranoia has to be one of the most poorly titled films to come out in recent memory. The trailer promises all sort of intrigue and betrayal – and with a cast including Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, and Richard Dreyfuss – it looked like we were getting an interesting thriller to tide us over until the Christmas release season. What we get instead is a dull, predictable, paint-by-numbers movie that fails to deliver on any of the promises made by the film’s marketing department. Continue reading →

“This is it, the final battle. Nobody’s ever faced odds like these before, and for good reason; any smart man would call this mission suicide, but it has to be done. The fate of the world is riding on our shoulders people, if we don’t succeed here, there won’t be a home to go back to. Are you ready? Great! You two come with me, everyone else stand over on the sidelines while the three of us take on these ridiculous odds. Let’s go!”

Chaaaaaarge!

Seems crazy doesn’t it? But time and time again players are confronted with this scenario in role-playing games. The fate of the world hangs in the balance, but they’re forced to tell most of their party to stay behind and take it easy while the player takes a couple of companions on a suicide mission. It’s become such a common part of these games that a lot of players barely even bat an eyelid when this happens – it’s the norm rather than the exception.

We all know the reason; it’s a video game and all of the fights are based around the player having a 3 character party, if they could bring everyone along the game would be completely unbalanced. But RPG’s are a story driven genre, and from a story perspective, the decision to leave everyone behind doesn’t make any sense. So I’m going to ask the question:

‘A love story about one of the most influential filmmakers of the last century, Alfred Hitchcock and his wife and partner Alma Reville. The film takes place during the making of Hitchcock’s seminal movie Psycho.‘

Alfred Hitchcock. Even people who aren’t into film have usually heard of him; and you can bet they’ve heard of his most popular film Psycho. But despite what you may have heard, Hitchcock is not really about the making of Psycho. It is instead a look into the psyche of the great director, and the sometimes tumultuous relationship he has with his wife Alma. This is a movie that looks at the price of fame on Alfred Hitchcock, and those around him. An incredibly personal tale of obsession and the darker nature of the human psyche, as well as how often we take those around us for granted.

With the new year kicking off, it’s time to look back at 2012; a year that brought a close to Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy and the Twilight franchise as well as kicking off a new trilogy in the form of The Hobbit. Marvel’s multi-movie continuity experiment payed off with The Avengers taking over $1 billion at the box office, and studios continued to push 3D – re-releasing everything from Titanic to The Phantom Menace in a bid to rake in some extra revenue.

There were a lot of great films this year, but if I was to write about all of them my hands would probably fall off. So I’ve narrowed down the field to a few standouts. Without further ado, let me present my awards for 2012; like the Oscars, but without any of that pesky credibility.

‘Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. brings together a team of super humans to form The Avengers to help save the Earth from Loki and his army.‘

Marvel’s experiment with a shared movie universe has been defying the odds for a while; the various Iron Man, Captain America and Thor movies have each been successful in their own right, and even the less than stellar Hulk movies have pulled in a reasonable income. But the real question on everyone’s mind was whether anyone could pull off a movie that featured all of these characters without feeling like a complete mess. Happily, Joss Whedon is up to the task; delivering a solid movie that doesn’t quite live up to the hype (could anything?) but never fails to entertain throughout. Continue reading →

‘The IMF is shut down when it’s implicated in the bombing of the Kremlin, causing Ethan Hunt and his new team to go rogue to clear their organization’s name.‘

Going by the example of the Mission: Impossible series, it would seem that a secret agent can only succeed when they go rogue from their agency. This is a tried and true trope of the genre, but it would be nice to see at least one of the four movies in the franchise move away from this setup. In Ethan Hunt’s latest outing, it would seem that the whole agency has been disavowed by the government after a particularly bad screw up at the Kremlin. It is up to Ethan, along with his prerequisite team of Tech Nerd (Simon Pegg), Hot Girl (Paula Patton) and Mysterious Guy (Jeremy Renner) to save the world once again from the bad guys through a series of thrilling chases, death-defying stunts and last-minute luck. Continue reading →